Property of a Lady

I got up, dusted down my skirt (old papers gather a remarkable quantity of dust), put my diary and pen in the pocket where I keep the matches, and went up the stairs.

At first I thought he was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down, then I saw it was only the mottled wall where a huge, damp stain had spread. In the dimness of the hall it looked like the outline of a man – I had noticed it before. But as I started up the stairs, I saw that after all it wasn’t the damp stain – it really was one of the workmen.

‘Hello,’ I said. My voice echoed in the enclosed space, and I saw him give a start of surprise as if he hadn’t realized I was there. ‘I didn’t know anyone was still here,’ I said. ‘I’ll be leaving and locking up in about ten minutes – have you finished?’

He did not answer. He began to come very slowly down the stairs – fumblingly, that’s the only word I can think of to describe it – and as he came, he was humming very softly to himself.

The throbbing headache that had started earlier increased, making me feel slightly dizzy, but – and this is the really curious thing – the soft humming was trickling in and out of my brain. Prowling music – beckoning music. Music that said: follow me . . .

I reached out to the banister to steady myself and began to say something else about intending to leave. Only, I don’t think it got said. The headache swelled to enormous monstrous proportions, and the music swooped and whirled around me, and the man seemed to come towards me through a kind of amber glaze. Like those insects you see trapped in resin – only, I was the trapped insect, looking out.

I have no recollection of moving up the stairs – I can only remember the soft cadences of the music and the overwhelming need to get closer to it. I think there was the feel of the new floorboards under my shoes, where the builders had nailed new sections of oak strips into place that day, but I can’t be sure.

And then, little by little, the humming faded, and I sank fathoms deep into sleep – only, I don’t think it could have been sleep in the normal sense of the word. I think it was much too deep and dense for that. I think I might have fainted.

When I opened my eyes, the amber glaze had gone and I was lying in a small, cramped space, half covered by pieces of old sacking. There’s the smell of new plaster, and it’s stiflingly hot and ominously quiet. Or is it? Isn’t that soft singing still going on somewhere, a long way away? No, there’s nothing to be heard.

I’ve pushed the sacking aside and managed to stand up, although I’m stiff and uncomfortable, as if I had been lying up here for a long time, and I’ve got pins and needles in my legs. But I’ve rubbed them to get the blood flowing again, and I’ve tried to see where I am. The matches I’ve been keeping in my skirt pocket are still there, with the diary and pen, and a few minutes ago I struck a match. Oh God, that was the worst moment of my life. The tiny flame flared up in the airless space, showing that I was in a small, narrow space, completely enclosed by four walls. And the walls are unbroken . . . I sat there on the floor, staring about me, until the flame burned all the way down and scorched my fingers.